How is everyone going to review the annotated games?Month 2 has a crap load. I think I will print off the pdf then set up the board and follow using the board. I do like the browser versions; it is much faster and easier to follow all the sub lines. But I do find that if I use the browser version I don’t retain the information that well.

fanat wrote:I study mostly at work so it would be strange to set up a board

I try to find the games in Megabase and go over them with Chessbase.

Month 2 has some great attacking games and the theory on kings safety and various pawn structures protecting the king is excellent!

what is megabase? is it a chesebase program?

Yes, it's a Chessbase database with tons of games so you can find any recent game pretty much that was played in most of the tournaments. So, if you are going over annotated game of some famous player you don't have to type in the moves yourself you can just find that game in the database. It's a great tool for lazy people!

fanat wrote:I study mostly at work so it would be strange to set up a board

I try to find the games in Megabase and go over them with Chessbase.

Month 2 has some great attacking games and the theory on kings safety and various pawn structures protecting the king is excellent!

what is megabase? is it a chesebase program?

Yes, it's a Chessbase database with tons of games so you can find any recent game pretty much that was played in most of the tournaments. So, if you are going over annotated game of some famous player you don't have to type in the moves yourself you can just find that game in the database. It's a great tool for lazy people!

Review annotated games is best done with a real board and pieces in front of you. This way you get the same feeling and sight as when you are playing a game yourself.

Offcourse, if you are an internet chess junky (ICC, FICS or Letsplaychess) then maybe using a chess program like Fritz or Rybka or Crafty or ... is best for you but if you always look at a 2D board you will have troubles when you play over the board (otb) since it's a completly different sight of the board.

I must admit I find playing annotated games over a real board to be an inferior method of absorbing the information.

When I am responsible for moving the pieces whilst reading from the notes I always move the wrong piece, for exampl if two knights on the d file can capture a pawn I'll move the wrong one and not realise until 2 or 3 moves later and have to go back and start over.

I just can't enjoy the game and my concentration is more about putting the pieces on the right squares.

For me the best way to study annotated games is to load them up from Megadatabase and that way I can just scroll through the moves and add my own variations and notes. My concentration is then focused entirely on the study notes and not the tedium of manually positioning the pieces.

Anyway i am conviced the best method is the one that suits your regular play. If you play more OTB games, then the best way is to study over the board, if you play on internet then screen study is best.

Why add another difficulty and study on a different support that the one you will use for playing. You just won't recognize patterns.

If you play both supports, then i guess you have to share the study, 1 over the board, 1 over the screen, and so on.

But if your target is to win Amber tournament, well... , i suppose you have to do it in your head

I've switched from the browser versions to the chessbase files. No more scrolling and I can engage the engine to "explain" where I have questions :-)

__________________________________________Content will be assimilated.Resistance is futile.----

Blue Devil Knight wrote:The danger of studying positional chess at the expense of tactics is that you will spend a half hour thinking about where a Knight belongs, and then proceed to put it on a beautiful square where it is en prise.

You can gain further efficiences if you work with the cb files in one of the database programs like Chessbase, or Chess Assistant and even some of the ones with less bells and whistles with the playing program gui's or one of the freeware programs (I use Chess Assistant, so I'm not exactly sure just how capable some of the other DB's are). You really don't need to have the millions of games, most of them are useless unless carefully screened; and besides, you can download thousands of high quality games for free at a number of sites.

You will have all of the capabilities of the browser, but can annotate, and classify games that will be available for later search. This I think will become more valuable as you will have quick access to games relevant to your opening repertoire.

As I go through the annotated games, I make notes, set classifiers, and will sometimes have two game windows open to compare positons and maneuvers between games. With classifiers you can tag games as models or with themes (such as "closed game" "open c-file" etc.) By taking a moment to do this as you study each game you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration by being able to do pin-point access later.

As a further efficiency, I've found it useful to "cut and paste" the lesson checklists and PME into Word for editing and printing, and keep the printed copies handy as I annotate games.

PawnCustodian wrote:You can gain further efficiences if you work with the cb files in one of the database programs like Chessbase, or Chess Assistant and even some of the ones with less bells and whistles with the playing program gui's or one of the freeware programs (I use Chess Assistant, so I'm not exactly sure just how capable some of the other DB's are). You really don't need to have the millions of games, most of them are useless unless carefully screened; and besides, you can download thousands of high quality games for free at a number of sites.

You will have all of the capabilities of the browser, but can annotate, and classify games that will be available for later search. This I think will become more valuable as you will have quick access to games relevant to your opening repertoire.

As I go through the annotated games, I make notes, set classifiers, and will sometimes have two game windows open to compare positons and maneuvers between games. With classifiers you can tag games as models or with themes (such as "closed game" "open c-file" etc.) By taking a moment to do this as you study each game you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration by being able to do pin-point access later.

As a further efficiency, I've found it useful to "cut and paste" the lesson checklists and PME into Word for editing and printing, and keep the printed copies handy as I annotate games.

__________________________________________Content will be assimilated.Resistance is futile.----

Blue Devil Knight wrote:The danger of studying positional chess at the expense of tactics is that you will spend a half hour thinking about where a Knight belongs, and then proceed to put it on a beautiful square where it is en prise.